Cloud Cover Could Be Reduced by 10% by 2100 Due to Climate Change, Increasing Temperatures

While it may sound like a good thing on the face of it, cloud cover being reduced by 10% over the next 90 years due to climate change, that additional amount of blue sky could mean that we're in for more temperature increases--that's according to research done at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, published in the Journal of Climate.Team member Ralf Bennartz (from the University of Wisconsin-Madison) says, "If this holds, we will find ourselves at the higher end of [temperature predictions."

In other words, we're more likely of hitting 4°C+ temperature rise by 2100--with all the devastating ecological changes that brings.

Drought and desertification would be widespread...there would be a need to shift agricultural cropping to new areas, impinging on [wild] ecosystems. Large-scale adaptation to sea-level rise would be necessary. Human and natural systems would be subject to increasing levels of agricultural pests and diseases, and increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

All of which, frankly, climate scientists have been warning us about for some time, to little avail--if progress on international action on climate and head-in-the-sand attitudes in Congress are any indication.